The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see
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The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see resource for landlubbers and mariners alike.

Carol Gafford is a public librarian, family historian, amateur archivist and book savior. She is currently the youth services/outreach librarian at the Swansea Public Library and volunteers for several museum and historical societies including the Marine Museum at Fall River, the Swansea Historical Society and the Bristol Historical and Preservation society. She is the editor of Past Times, the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists and is always looking for a new project to take on.

Rosanne Cash has never sounded better than she did Thursday night at the Narrows Center in Fall River. Cash, with just husband/producer John Leventhal on guitar and piano, performed a 100-minute show that was a paragon of superb vocals, intelligent songwriting, and gorgeous, stripped down country and Americana.

Cash's 19-song set (if we don't include several requests she did bits of --including a potentially show-stopping "Rocket Man")--also included six songs from her forthcoming album, "The River and the Thread," due for release on January 14. Judging from the songs we heard, and the response they got from the almost-capacity crowd of about 280, Cash's 15th album will be another winner.

Cash, the oldest daughter of music icon Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian, first became a national name herself in 1981, when her "Seven Year Ache" album yielded a chart-topping single with its title cut, which also broke into the Top 30 on the pop charts. Cash, then recording with then-husband Rodney Crowell as producer and songwriting partner, forged a new brand of country-rock with her smart lyrics and evocative delivery. Nominated for 12 Grammys she didn't win, Cash took home a Grammy in 1985 for the song "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me," and collected eleven #1 country hits.

But by 1990, she was trying new directions, tired of the touring grind and her "Interiors" album marked a departure towards simpler arrangements, even some folk music touches. In the next couple years, she moved from Nashville to New York City, divorced Crowell, and began writing more prose as well as her music. She married Leventhal in 1995, after they'd worked on her "The Wheel" album, and published her first collection of short stories in '96.

More recently, Cash's thoughtful 2006 album "Black Cadillac" was said to be influenced heavily by the deaths around that time of her father, stepmother June Carter Cash, and mother Vivian Liberto. In 2007 Cash was sidelined by brain surgery to correct a rare condition, but by 2009 she was back in action with the album "The List," a compilation of songs she and her dad had considered crucial to American roots music. Cash published her memoir "Composed" in 2010 to wide acclaim, both for its writing style and candor. But it has been almost four years since her last album, so next month's CD release is eagerly awaited.

From her first forays onto the charts, Cash's greatest strength has been her interpretative ability. Her sparkling alto vocals can be serious, playful, sexy, pensive, or heartbreaking from moment to moment, and when that is coupled with her writing ability (and her ability to find terrific co-writers, or simply find great songs), the effects can be stunning. There were lots of striking moments Thursday, many from the new tunes she and Leventhal wrote more or less about life in the South (never mind that they both call Manhattan home these days).

For a duet show that was basically acoustic guitars, Thursday's show was fortunate to take place before an audience devoted to music--or perhaps Cash and Leventhal earned their reverent reception through their brilliance. Either way, the audience was respectfully quiet, with hardly any of the usual cellphone photo-taking or other distractions. Cash, now 58, looked as vibrant and slim as in her '80's heyday, and was clearly enjoying her music, and her interaction with the fans. Thursday's set drew heavily on her previous two albums.

Cash opened with a song from "Black Cadillac," an easy-rocking country tune "Dreams Are Not My Home," where the sheer tonal beauty of her vocal essentially won the crowd over within seconds. A choice from 'The List' was next, as Cash turned Hank Snow's nugget "I'm Movin' On" into a more sensual, gritty ballad, as Leventhal crafted a lowdown creeper figure on his guitar.

Cash introduced the first tune from her next CD by detailing how Johnny Cash's family had bought an old farm in Arkansas in 1935, where times were hard and the work was harder, and Johnny's mother was the main force keeping the family together. "The Sunken Lands" was a hushed ballad, where the poignance and pain in Cash's voice evoked those struggles, yet hinted at the eventual triumph of surviving them. Another song from the new CD lightened the mood, as "Modern Blue" depicted a rollicking romance, where the singer knows she just can't tame that man.

Yet another new one was a compelling bit of Cash family history, as "Etta's Tune" was inspired by Johnny Cash's longtime bass player, Marshall Grant. As Rosanne told the crowd, he was married to his wife Etta for 65 years, and began every day by asking her what the temperature outside was, and the song was a suitably sweet and affectionate look at that quirky marriage.

A little sidetrip back to "The List" brought an ominous and foreboding take on "Long Black Veil," a tune Cash called 'the starting point of all American roots music.' Sticking with that album's chestnuts, Cash sang a rendition of "Motherless Children" that was as much country twang as bluesy soul.

Probably the moment that was most impressive for Cash's writing skills was the song "The World Unseen," from her 'Black Cadillac" album. With Cash herself providing some first rate finger-picking, that ballad seemed to be a rumination on her dad's life and times, and how she fit into the picture then, and now. The song was wistful, and a bit melancholy, but the emotional power of her lyrics was absolutely stunning.

In keeping with her new album's theme of life and living in the South, Cash noted how she and Leventhal had toured through the area where bluesman Robert Johnson lived and died, visited the river where Emmett Till had been murdered, and then had found the Tallahatchee Bridge, immortalized in Bobbie Gentry's 1967 hit "Ode to Billy Joe." Cash then delivered as affecting a version of that old chestnut as anyone ever has, honing its bittersweet tone of tragedy and mystery to perfection, as Leventhal provided stellar instrumental background, even to the point of a final bass string arpeggio that seemed to depict that unknown package sinking into the water.

Somewhere along about there, Cash lightened the mood by telling people that requests might be okay later on. Since she had already mentioned seeing Elton John in New York two weeks ago, and being amazed at his showmanship--"I've got to step up my game!" she kidded--some wiseguy requested "Rocket Man." Cash sang the first couple lines, and Leventhal banged out some Elton-like chords on piano, but that was as far as she got, admitting she didn't know the words that well. "Maybe someday we ought to do an album of Elton John covers," she mused, "the man certainly did write some songs." There were a couple more instances when requests for obscure or old Cash songs got similar results, a line or two, and a promise to brush up on them before the next local visit. But it was all done in such good humor, nobody was disappointed, and given the number of tunes she's done, it would be pretty incredible if she had them all on mental speed-dial.

Back to the regular set, Cash did another new one, and "50,000 Watts" was a rip-roaring country rocker in her classic style, albeit with a tad more rootsy gospel flavor. That led easily into "Tell Heaven," which Cash explained was a song she and Leventhal wrote as gospel-style for any denomination, or even atheists. It was a sort of life-affirming midtempo piece, but not nearly as much fun as the jaunty romp through her dad's "Tennessee Flat Top Box" which followed. The latter tune featured such a dazzling Leventhal guitar workout that his wife felt it necessary to point out, at it's finish, "and..he's a lifelong New Yorker!"

Cash noted that her youngest daughter's 25th birthday was Thursday, and she herself had been younger than that when she wrote 1981's "Maybe I'll Just Go Away Today," a slow and moving ballad. Cash also noted that her Grammy winning tune had been composed mainly out of disappointment at not winning the year before, and seen in that light, "Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me" took on a new layer of meaning last night.

"She's Got You" was another supple bit of writing and singing, resigned heartbreak, amid resilience, all delivered in a gently bumping midtempo two-step. Leventhal's electric guitar gave an especially haunting tone to the ethereal "Money Road," another fine song from that soon-to-come album. Cash ended her regular set with her biggest hit, but "Seven Year Ache" on Thursday carried a kind of buoyant tone, the confident air of a survivor who's weathered those storms.

For her encores, Cash reached back to 'The List,' and invited the throng to join her in a raucous singalong. That was surely no problem, as the night's quiet reverence erupted into joyous choruses on the old Jim Reeves hit (written by Harlan Howard) "Heartaches By the Number." Then Cash and Leventhal (at piano) created a stately and hymn-like version of the old, traditional "500 Miles," and again the hall of 280 sang along earnestly. But once again, the lead singer was delivering an indelible performance that transformed that old melody into something new and more meaningful.

Whether it was vocal tone, phrasing, or dynamics, Cash was superb last night, and never seemed to be straining or belting it out or even coming close to her maximum power. And as far as interpreting a wide range of material and investing it all with something special, something beyond the usual, Cash hit it out of the ballpark.